


To Carve and to Crown

by the_casual_cheesecake



Category: Marvel 616
Genre: Bloodplay, Blow Jobs, Fluff, Knifeplay, M/M, Podfic Available, Power Dynamics, The author's approximation of it at least
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-17 21:55:39
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,775
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21517069
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_casual_cheesecake/pseuds/the_casual_cheesecake
Summary: Ownership is an odd thing to negotiate. Sometimes one must carve themselves out a place.
Relationships: Stephen Strange/Victor von Doom
Comments: 6
Kudos: 28





	To Carve and to Crown

**Author's Note:**

> I have made a fluff! Look upon my kingdom, people! 
> 
> Wynnesome, you are an incredible beta, my mind is blown by you every time you make connections in my writing, thank you so much for your help, this is your doing as much as mine. 
> 
> Menatiera, thank you very much for your notes, they made the story better. 
> 
> Title is a reference from a Richard Siken poem.

They are lying on their bed and the sun is hitting Stephen in a line across his chest. It’s still morning, and he’s grateful that the machinations of the day have not yet forced him to leave this cocoon. Victor is sitting up by the headboard reading a book; his hand is in Stephen’s hair -- has been for the past half an hour. Stephen should, perhaps, not be so surprised at how indulgent Victor can be with him but he somehow always is. 

The sun is warm; Victor is warm. They’re both naked. Stephen is still covered in drying spots of saliva and slow-forming bruises. He still has the bitter taste of Victor’s come in his mouth. It feels pleasantly like being owned. 

Victor hums. It is a _what-an-interesting-turn-of-phrase_ hum and Stephen loves that he knows this man enough to decipher the small sounds that he makes. He loves every single one of them, cherishes them even more for all it's taken to earn the learning of them. He nestles into Victor, his hand wandering across his torso and painting patterns in his chest hair. 

“Are you bored, pet?” Victor asks, and his voice rumbles under Stephen’s ear. Stephen shivers a little at the intimacy of it, then shakes his head against Victor’s skin, his head brushes Victor’s chest, hair against rough hair, the sound of it plays in his ear over the quiet of the morning.  
Victor’s hand pulls at his tresses, not enough to hurt, but enough to remind him that he doesn’t belong to himself at the moment. He can feel Victor’s focus shifting to him, and there is power in the intensity of it that transcends physical weight. It steals Stephen’s thoughts away from the sun. 

“When I like people immensely I never tell their names to anyone. It is like surrendering a part of them. I have grown to love secrecy.” Victor recites as he pets him. He does it often; reads aloud so Stephen could taste the words with him.

Stephen likes Oscar Wilde, usually. He likes Oscar Wilde more coming from Victor’s mouth, listening to the quiet growl of it under his ear, an accompanying orchestra to the words.  
Stephen finds in himself unusual resentment for Oscar Wilde at this recital, though. Who is he to infect Victor’s mind with thoughts of secrecy? They, who stood side by side at the end of the world, at the top of a new one. Being condemned to the shadows? It would be a tragedy. 

Stephen lets his fingers wander on Victor’s skin and they write his name across it, unbidden. He imagines Victor conducting his kingly errands, wandering the halls of his castle, conferring with his ministers, with Stephen’s name marking him all the while. 

“I want to carve my name into your skin,” Stephen says, and then freezes. 

For a long moment, his thoughts are halted at an edge, he is balanced on a single word echoing in his head: 

_Fuck._

And then he falls off the cliff down into deep, running waters:

_Fool, what have you done? ...told the most powerful man in the world you think you deserve to mark him like a dog marking property? ...think you deserve to claim him, like he's ever come down from being your god? Idiot, imbecile, what disastrous whim has possessed your tongue, turned it heretic?_

He is poised to be dispossessed, exorcised from Victor's embrace.; the earlier comfort of the sun dissipating and leaving ice-cold tension in his body. He is thrumming, expecting to be struck down. Instead, Victor just puts down his book and says, breathless: 

“Get a knife.”

Stephen stares at him in complete silence. He thinks he isn’t even breathing. 

Victor’s eyes are dark, intense -- he can’t be -- but he is, he’s serious. Stephen swims through his thoughts and up to his knees; summons a knife into his hand without conscious thought. It’s heavier than he imagined it would be, or maybe that’s the weight of the atmosphere in his palm. 

Victor is already hardening underneath the green silk sheet. Stephen studies him again. He’s still relaxed and leaning against the headboard like he didn’t just flip Stephen’s world on its axis. 

“Pick a spot,” he says, lounging into the pillow behind his back. He smirks at Stephen and inches his legs apart under the covers. 

Smug bastard. Even at the height of Stephen’s opulence and degeneracy, he never reached the levels of self-satisfaction that Victor breathes in and exudes like air. Stephen covets the comfort that must bring. If he’s very lucky, he might learn it himself one day. Till then, he can pray Victor owns him deeply enough that he becomes a part of that revered self.

Stephen looks at him for a moment longer. Green does look good against his skin, golden and unblemished. Stephen wants his mouth on every inch of it. He abandons the knife on the bed for the moment to lean into Victor to kiss him. Victor’s smirk is lovely on his mouth, and Stephen would kiss him for hours, has before; he would live in the moment of the touch of their lips, but he has a goal: a self-imposed duty to a higher power. 

He trails his mouth down Victor’s neck, across his pulse, bites on the thin skin; he hopes it leaves a mark because this entire exercise is a study in possession and he wants to paint the picture of Victor: owned. 

Stephen mouths at both of Victor’s nipples, his shoulders, the soft undersides of his arms, his stomach, he licks at the skin above his cock. Victor looks enraptured when Stephen glances at him. His smile has slackened on his face in pleasure and he is following Stephen’s mouth with primal hunger etched on his twitching muscles. Something stirs inside Stephen. It’s warm and satisfied. He wonders if this is what Victor feels when he takes him. Powerful; euphoric. 

With a finger, he follows the path of his mouth from Victor’s chin to his groin. Victor shivers minutely, the hair on his chest standing on end, and then he tangles a hand in Stephen’s hair because Stephen is on his knees for him, and this is what they do.

Victor is erect now - he always hardens quickly, a symptom of his lifetime of deprivation. Stephen loves this about him too. Victor tugs at his handful, and Stephen hisses, smiles and brushes Victor’s abdomen with his lips, traces his tongue along the line of hair, but doesn’t go further; instead, he picks up the discarded knife.

He runs the blunt width of the blade down Victor’s chest, slowly. It leaves a white trail that disappears within a second. Stephen’s marks won’t. He shifts to Victor’s side and touches Victor’s groin with a shaking hand - _these hands of mine I command you to still._ They don’t comply. He caresses the length of a space a hand would print above Victor’s groin - _blue lines and the smell of the operating room_ \- and decides -- this is where he will lay himself on Victor’s skin. 

He positions the knife - his scalpel - at the edge of Victor’s short neat curls, centers it, and then looks at Victor for a pause, asking again, without words. He can almost feel the metal on his own groin, his own muscles tense in preparation. He can smell the anesthetic in his nostrils, because that’s what usually precedes a cut; there is no such comfort in this operation. 

“You’ve marked me in deeper ways than this, Stephen.” Victor whispers and threads his fingers deeper in Stephen’s hair to scratch at his scalp. Stephen swallows the ocean wave inside himself. 

He traces the S on the delicate skin with the point of the knife, not pressing enough to draw blood. Victor hisses. _5, 4, 3…_

Stephen makes the first cut. 

The skin opens cleanly on the sharp blade. A moment later, red, royal blood spills on it and Victor exhales a held breath. The muscles of his abdomen jump, involuntarily, Stephen thinks, because everything else about him stills in the moment of the cut, a statue of a leader made of living flesh. 

Stephen is mesmerized. Not by the blood or the wound; he’s seen countless. There is a high he feels inside him that he hasn’t felt since he was at university and stupid on youth. Victor is letting him look inside his skin. His mind is looping the thought and overlaying it on the image of the blood over and over again. His breath is heavy and light and taken away all at once. 

He carves the letter into Victor’s groin. 

_S._

Victor’s cock twitches. Stephen doesn’t want to stifle the impulse, so he doesn’t. He leans further in and mouths at the tip of it through the silk. The hand in his hair tightens and Victor thrusts up with a gasp. His wound bleeds deep crimson at his movement. It feels sacrilegious. his blood shouldn’t spill on the ground; it is destruction that only Victor’s restraint and mercy can hold inside his own veins. 

Stephen has jumped them both off the tightrope of tension. He brings them back up on it again like a rewind when he moves his mouth to the cut and traces the letter with his tongue. He takes the holy essence inside him -- _copper, salt, primal like lust_ \-- it is suddenly the most vital thing that he take every drop inside himself. A full-body shudder strings through Victor, Stephen feels it in his mouth. God. He’s dizzy with it, this feeling of having Victor so thoroughly. 

“You look wild.” Victor says and runs a thumb over Stephen’s lips. Stephen sucks on it. “Is it for me? Or were you always like this, pet? It’s stunning” Stephen’s mouth slackens to reply -- when Victor asks, he answers -- only to have Victor shake his head and stiffen his hand, intractable, his thumb holding its occupied territory. “No. Never answer me, I’d like to imagine it’s my influence that made you like this,” he says. He’s breathing heavily, Stephen isn’t sure if it’s pain or lust, but he knows it’s his doing. There’s a satisfying reciprocity in the moment. It is fire inside him.

Victor relents; Stephen pulls his mouth away and brings knife to flesh again. He starts drawing the cross of the T and thinks about Victor as god. How powerful, how commanding he was. His words, always intense, carried a world behind them. Victor was god and Stephen was his. He was Ishmael and Victor Ibrahim, and when god told Victor to sacrifice him, Victor ripped his heart out because Victor was god and there was no one to interfere. 

Stephen cuts the cross into Victor as both punishment and absolution. For whose sins -- his own; Victor's; theirs mutually? -- he's not sure, maybe it’s all of it. He says nothing of where his thoughts have wandered and busses the skin afterwards and licks at it like an apology. He smears the blood with his mouth, Victor hisses and tightens his hold on Stephen’s hair. 

Stephen looks at him then. Victor’s jaw is tense, he has a hand fisted in the fabric on the bed, it’s clenching and unclenching - oh, Victor is counting seconds with the grip of his fingers; meditative anesthesia. 

Something vicious inside Stephen says that Victor should have to feel every second, with no distractions; no escape.

He carves the E slowly, methodically. He pauses after every line to mouth around the wounds, to tongue into the slits in the skin. It makes Victor pant. It makes Stephen smile. There is a mountain of complex emotions wrapped around his love for this man. They are tangled together with betrayal and deep understanding, ripping himself from Victor would tear his flesh in two. He loves him and he resents him and he never wants to leave his side. 

He lowers the sheet after the E is complete and takes Victor into his mouth. He closes his eyes and listens to the pleasured gasps and the hurt whines that Victor spills and suppresses. He focuses on the pull of the hand in his hair, on his own neglected cock. It brings back his high from where it fled at the thoughts of death and destruction and then pulls away from Victor again. 

The P is an exercise in keeping his hand still enough to carve. His hands are shaking for reasons other than the damaged nerves, now. He’s shivering. The profanity of the act, of his indulgence in it, has sent up his emotions in a spirale. 

“Come here,” Victor says, his voice dark, controlled, and moves his hand, feverish and shaking, to cup Stephen’s face. 

Stephen moves in a trance to kiss Victor. He tastes like blood and come and for a second Stephen is confused, and then he realizes he’s tasting himself in the kiss. He moans into Victor’s mouth and thrusts his hips against him. Victor hisses. Stephen remembers the wounds. He looks down from where he’s sprawled and realizes he’s writing his name upside-down on the centerline of Victor’s abdomen, so Victor could look down and read it. He kisses Victor’s neck and hides his face there. Stephen is trembling, and Victor smells dark, warm; safe in all his magnitude, towering even as he lies, laid open, underneath him. 

Victor hushes him and kisses the crown of his head. 

“You’re doing very well, pet.” A whisper into his hair. 

Stephen takes three measured breaths and then ducks out from under the weight of Victor’s hand to continue. Victor reaches for him even as he pulls away, the warmth of his breath on Stephen’s face a temptation. Duty calls, though, urgently, and Stephen will answer. 

The H is fast and stuttery. He hopes it doesn’t ruin his tableau, but he’s too wrecked to do anything about it. Victor hisses, and grabs his wrist to steady him. He guides Stephen’s hand on the last line and exhales a deep, pained breath as the knife cuts into him.

Stephen licks the letters clean after they carve it. He thrusts against the bedsheets. It’s undignified; he doesn’t care. Victor has seen the insides of him before, spilled them on the hot desert floor. The symmetry of being the viewer now makes Stephen ache.

He writes the second E and then abandons the knife to suck Victor into his mouth again, an anchor in his storm of thoughts. Solid weight on his tongue pinning him down, grounding him. He lets Victor’s taste overtake him: blood, sweat, saliva, and pre-come, all inside Stephen, where they’ll be merged with his cells. Victor is a part of him now, always. It’s the most intimate thing Stephen has experienced in his life. 

Victor comes in his mouth with a ragged moan, for once uninhibited, when Stephen caresses the name on his abdomen. 

Stephen stays for a moment, Victor softening in his mouth. He licks him clean, and then reluctantly mouths and nips his way up again. With his fingers, he traces the empty space where the last letter of this scene will be written. 

He picks up the knife again and watches the N being written by his right hand as if he isn’t the one doing it. He brushes the finished letters with his wrist as he carves. Victor is tensed, steeled to it; skin stretched taut over the muscle, making it easier to write. It’s so beautiful. 

When all is done and the name is complete, it looks like the script of a spell; a ritual. Stephen runs his fingers along the hot, wounded skin -- he could slip a finger inside him, touch his exposed, vulnerable flesh so easily, and the thought makes him dizzy. He leans in and presses his lips to it instead and then continues up to kiss Victor. He lays atop him. He can feel the blood spreading over his own stomach -- he is marked by this, too. Victor holds him close, rubs his back with spasmodic hands, like Victor is the one damaged, and Stephen the one wounded. 

Stephen can feel the sun again. It’s moved up while he wasn’t looking; it warms his shivering shoulders.

Victor maneuvers them under the sheets with labored breaths and taut muscles, and wraps Stephen in his arms. 

“You have me,” he says and takes Stephen’s hand and places it on the still bleeding name. “Here, your claim.” Then he presses a hand on Stephen’s chest. “Here, mine.” Stephen can’t find the words to answer, so he leans to kiss his lover - his god, his Victor, his, his, his. 

Victor lets him.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] To Carve and to Crown](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22171723) by [Cathalinareads (Cathalinaheart)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cathalinaheart/pseuds/Cathalinareads)




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